We may like to dance to the beat of our own drum from time to time, or work in opposing spectrums, but it gets lonely, and we may not be the world’s greatest dancers, so a partner usually comes in handy!

At Ipsos Marketing, we are delighted to announce our Front End of Innovation (FEI) combination offer with Ipsos Understanding Unlimited. In short, we are quant and qual, and we are uniting in earnest to better serve you, our beloved client in FEI.

Our objective in coming together is simple.

We are here to honor the unmet needs of consumers and to enable our clients to qualify those insights and ideas into successful market launches that result in boatloads of revenue. If the pipeline needs to be filled, we are here to make it bountiful as a unified qual and quant team.

The integration of IQ and EQ is the very intersection of qual and quant, the ethos of turning the human insight and emotion into a measurable idea, bound for shelf space and market success. Our approach marries the very best of hot and cold, IQ and EQ, Ipsos Marketing and Ipsos Understanding Unlimited, Qual and Quant.

Unleashing consumer thoughts, feelings, emotions, and hearing them empathically is the gift of qualitative. An idea built in absence of consumer need, want, desire or tension is bereft of emotion and likely to fail as a sound insight.

We’ve developed a 4-phase FEI Framework that manifests the marriage of qual and quant beautifully, punctuating the point that we are meant to be together; almost as well as the Android campaign, almost.

We begin with immersion of the category and the consumer, to assure we hone in on the white space and convert it into salient ideas. Through our Masterminds and Uber Consumer workshops, we work directly with the consumer to empathically listen to their unmet needs, to understand the why behind them, and to co-create oodles of insight-led ideas for our client and their innovation pipeline. We arrive at hundreds of ideas in Phase 1, validating that consumer insight is the finest basis for idea generation.

Measuring ideas is the gift of quant. Ideas that become products that are launched in market without qualification are at risk of delisting and likely bound for the Museum of Failed products.

In phase 2, we review buckets of ideas and cull them down to uniquely distinguished ideas to put into our Overnight Testing. In just 24 hours, we share back the ideas that rose to the top quantitatively. The ideas that are differentiated, relevant, and believable (Red Measures) are the most likely to succeed in market. In effect, we create a shortcut to concept development, assuring that no time is wasted on ideas that are not likely to see the light of day. Wow, the gift of qual and quant, eh?

With successful ideas in hand from our Overnight Testing, we are ready for Phase 3. Now enter the Consumer Link Workshop, where we expand upon our sound insights and benefits (ideas), to evolve via co-creation into full new product concepts. With the seamless collaboration of the qual and quant team, the client and the consumer, we arrive at dozens of concepts at the close of this qualitative phase.

Now we are ready for our 4th and final phase, Concept Testing. This final quantitative step assures that our concepts are valid and prime for positive evolution. Whether that be further testing (pricing, product, volume forecasting, etc.) or simply ready for further creative development of the brand, we jointly arrive at true innovation success though the integration of qual and quant.

Coming together is what’s now, being a unified qual and quant force is what’s next.

Please join us in our Front End of Innovation evolution of qual and quant. Who knows what joyfully delightful, unexpected combinations we’ll create together!